http://blog.mesritz.us Philippe Mesritz' Customer Focused Musings Wed, 03 Sep 2008 14:21:31 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en I'm glad to say that I'm finally done with school again.  It's been a long journey to get my degrees (14 years after the first time I stepped into a university), but it has certainly been worth it.  The challenge of balancing work, family and school has helped me in ... http://blog.mesritz.us/index.php/2008/09/03/finally-done/ To make it more convenient for my readers, I've changed the RSS setting from summary to full. Now you can simply use your favorite email or RSS subscriber to read the blog and not have to follow the links in -- though you're welcome to! Comments and feedback is always ... http://blog.mesritz.us/index.php/2008/09/03/slight-rss-change/ On Tuesday, I attend "Best Practices in Call Monitoring Seminar series with Dr. Jon Anton". I've been through Dr. Jon Anton's College of Call Center Excellence and found it quite interesting, though there are some things that I thought they could improve. See here for my writeup on the ... http://blog.mesritz.us/index.php/2008/09/02/best-practices-in-call-monitoring-seminar-series-with-dr-jon-anton/ The Service Level Group write a blog entry that they called "Don’t Try To Over Optimize Your Call Center Staff". It has some excellent points ... the big one that they make is this:"Lost in the cost-focused and efficiency-focused conversation are two critical elements for providing customer service in ... http://blog.mesritz.us/index.php/2008/08/19/staff-optimization/ QAQNA: Tips for Sounding Good on the Phone His few tidbits come from an actor, vocal coach, casting director and professor ... they all make excellent sense. Posture - Slouches always sound ... well, like they're slouching. Consonants - It's difficult to understand someone that is slurring their words. It is also quite ... http://blog.mesritz.us/index.php/2008/08/19/sound-good-on-the-phone/ The below came through on a mailing list that I'm on and I felt that it was an interesting take on things.  It's something that I agree with and, whenever possible, my own endeavors wouldn't pay on 100% commission either.  There are times when it's the only option as I ... http://blog.mesritz.us/index.php/2008/08/15/from-an-associate-re-sales-commission/ From the blog --Service Untitled » Make a quick attempt. - customer service and customer service experience blog "If you have the customer’s phone number (from a voicemail or a callback request), put it into your system and see if anything comes up. If you have their email address, look it up. If ... http://blog.mesritz.us/index.php/2008/08/15/make-a-quick-attempt/ "I believe that an over reliance on metrics plague the call center industry at the expense of the customer experience." (Metrics-Schmetrics « rich mclafferty’s customer experience weblog)Rich has an interesting point. Although I only partially agree, the fact is that metrics alone is not the way to measure your ... http://blog.mesritz.us/index.php/2008/08/13/call-center-metrics/ One of the blogs I regularly read posted a A Toast to CSRs! It's great!I'll also add to the toast:Who understand the business goals and work to further themselves, the customers and the business at the same time.Who understand that the customer is not personally annoyed with them and ... http://blog.mesritz.us/index.php/2008/08/12/a-toast-to-csrs/ I put this under "motivation" for my blog for one reason and one reason only .. it's personal motivation! I'm starting a regime that I recently heard about on the radio. It is called one hundred push ups. The idea is that at the end of six weeks, ... http://blog.mesritz.us/index.php/2008/08/12/one-hundred-pushups/